BP had been low, respirations had been elevated, and she’d been very, very thirsty.
The X-rays revealed what was known as the white butterfly shape . . . her lungs had exploded at the time of the blast, the result of the enormous pressure wave. She might very well have had her mouth open at the time of the blast, although that wasn’t absolutely necessary for the internal damage. Immediate surgery was the only possible course, but given the size of the white area, there was very little chance of her survival. The odds were also very good that there were many other internal injuries as well.
As they hurried her along, they’d intubated her, were administering oxygen, and three IV’s were in her arms. Within fourteen minutes of being admitted, she was in surgery. Nineteen minutes later, she was dead.
02:10
They’d taken my sport coat, so I officially considered that a write-off. I had been X-rayed, questioned, scrutinized, probed, stripped and examined over every inch of my body. Now in a hospital gown, I found myself with an IV drip to ward off shock, a cannula under my nose, and a nurse washing my face and another irrigating my eyes.
The one swabbing my face kept saying, “Now, this may be a bit uncomfortable . . . how are we coming?”
I remember thinking, hey, I can hear! The ringing was still there, but it didn’t quite drown out everything. It was a lot like trying to have a conversation standing next to a very busy street. “It’s not uncomfortable at all,” I said. “Can’t feel a thing. Honest.”
“Brilliant,” she said. “I’ll be applying ointment now . . . it should feel a bit cool to you. Not to worry.”
Again, I told her I didn’t feel a thing. In the meantime, I was looking at the other nurse from under water. I was just a little confused. I’d never had my eyes irrigated before, and it was taking a long time for me to realize that the under water effect was just the running water in my eyes.
The water stopped, and I was staring up at a bright light.
“Oh, fine,” said a female voice. “Very good. Hullo. I’m Doctor Benton, and your eyes are just fine.”
“Hi.”
“Your face is a bit puffy, you’ve experienced flash burns, I’m afraid. Any discomfort?”
“Nope. None.”
“The ointment will be cooling. They aren’t bad, you understand. First degree.”
“Okay.”
“Your X-rays were just fine. How do you feel?”
“Okay, I guess. Numb . . . mostly mentally. But things are clearing up.”
“I see,” she said, as she made a note on a clipboard. “Well, brilliant. You were in a nasty explosion, I understand.”
“You could say that.”
“A gas main, they say.”
“What?”
“A gas main or something . . . in the flat where you were.” The doctor looked quite concerned. “You have a recollection of that?”
It took me a second. Then I got it. Gas main. Well, if it worked for the Brits, it was fine with me. “Okay. Yeah, I remember. Clear as a bell. Gas main, I said to myself.”
The busy little movements in the room stopped.
“Indeed?” asked Dr. Benton. “You wouldn’t be having me on would you?”
“No. Really, I remember it.” I began to think I might have laid it on a little too thickly. You stand next to a bomb sometime, and see how well you do.
She looked at me without expression. “Higgins,” she said, without turning around, “we’ll need a look at his head. Within an hour?” I never heard Higgins answer, but I know that I was laying in a white tube a while later, and I suspect it was a CAT scan or something very much like it.
“Do you remember just who you were with?” asked Dr. Benton.
“No need for details now,” said a familiar male voice. “Plenty of time for that.” It was Blyth.
They must have given me a sedative, because I was getting sleepier and sleepier.
“How’s Alice?” I asked.
“Very well,” said Blyth. His voice faded.
05:31
I came around, and saw Sue sitting next to my bed. “Hey? How you doing?” I asked.
“Me! My God. How are you?”
“Well, fine, I guess.” But as I talked, my face began to feel very tight. “Except for my face, maybe.”
“You look like you have a very bad sunburn,” she said.
“Ah. Sure. Thermal . . . thing. Can I have some water?”
I faded back out. The ringing in my ears was constant. It kind of helped me to sleep.
07:38
I was back and now I felt really good. Except for my face, which felt very hot and very tight. And the ringing in my ears.
Sue was still in her chair.
“Good morning,” I said, and just about scared her to death.
She went out into the hall, to tell them I was awake, and then came back.
“You are so lucky,” she said.
“You got that right.”
“A natural gas explosion . . . good Lord, whoever would have thought?”
This time, I didn’t need a hint. Natural gas it was. If that’s what they wanted, it was good for me, but I’d had some experience with that in the US. The gas company was going to raise hell with somebody, and get a retraction. But that took time. “Quite a bang,” I said. “How’s everybody else?”
“Alice is getting along very well,” said Sue. “I saw her about an hour ago, and she said to tell you hello. They tell me that you will be up and around in a few hours, but if you don’t feel well enough, don’t do it.”
“Okay. But I feel good. I think. We’ll see when I stand up.”
“You wait for a nurse.”
I thought about it. “Okay.” I grinned. “How about a kiss?”
She leaned over and kissed me lightly. “Does that hurt?”
“Nope.”
She kissed me again, and then stood back. “It looks like it would.”
It was really weird. I got up with a nurse close by, went to the head after I persuaded her that she wasn’t going to come in with me, felt very alert and rested, walked very carefully back to bed with her right there, sat down, laid down, and that’s all I remember.
08:22
I was awakened by two doctors, who gave me a once-over that included peering into my eyes with a small light, asked if I’d had any head injuries in the recent past, and then decided that the best thing for me would be breakfast and a walk in the hall. They’d left, I’d gone to the head again without a nurse interfering, and was sitting on the edge of my bed, drinking a cup of coffee and telling Sue that I wasn’t about to walk anywhere outside the room in a hospital gown, when Blyth came in.
“Very good to see you up and about,” he said.
I’d gotten a look at my face in the mirror in the bathroom. “Well, at least up. I saw my face. I look a lot like a tomato,” I said.
“That you do.”
“How’s Alice?”
“Absolutely fine, has what’s apparently a mild concussion. She is bearing a strong resemblance to a tomato as well.”
“And Sarah Mitchell?”
I could tell by the look on his face, even before he spoke. “She didn’t make it, I’m afraid. Enormous internal damage. Just about got everything, they tell me. Painless, they said, but she was gone within an hour or two.”
“Well, shit,” I said. “That’s awful. Hell, I thought I saw her talking to Mark . . .”
“Quite conscious, he said,” said Blyth. “Apparently her systems were just shutting down from the moment of the explosion.”
“Shit. . . . What about Northwood . . . I seem to remember him flying out the window.”
“We’ll talk about those details later. And, how are you getting along?” he asked Sue.
Great Portland Street
London
09:35 Greenwich Mean Time
A man well known to Mr. Kazan entered his shop, browsed, and when the other customer had left, approached the counter, and laid a paper ba
g on the counter, and left. In the bag, Mr. Kazan found a brand-new mobil phone. With it was a folded piece of paper, with the number of another cell phone.
Mr. Kazan went into the back room, closed the curtain, and using the cell phone, dialed the number.
Anton answered on the first ring.
“Why did you not know there were others with him?” asked Mr. Kazan.
“We had no way . . .”
“You had many ways,” came the terse response.
“His phone was busy. Imad couldn’t re-contact him, even on his computer. If he was on the telephone, he would very likely be by himself. It was reasonable.”
“Except he was not alone,” said Mr. Kazan. “So it was not reasonable. Who were those who were with him?”
“On the news, they only identify Northwood, and the Mitchell woman. The dead one. She worked for a newspaper. She is the one who interviewed the American?”
“I can read the papers. Who are the others? It says that there were two men and three women in the hospital. Who are they? Find out. And let me talk to Imad.”
“One of them is Imad.”
“What?”
“In hospital,” said Anton. “Imad is one of them.”
“Imad? Our Imad?”
“He was following her. He was to wait on the first floor, in case she failed to sacrifice herself. In case she came back down the stairs. He had her rigged with a phone detonator. He would set her off if she hesitated. But he had to be able to know where she was.”
Mr. Kazan said nothing.
“He must have gone up too far. He was injured. . . .”
“He is at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s?”
“Yes. He is still there. I had someone from the mosque check that. The hospital . . . they will not divulge the nature of his injuries except to a relative. They do tell us that they are not critical.”
“Do they know who he is?”
“How am I expected to know?”
“You will find out. You will be his relative.”
“What name do I use?” He had no idea what Imad’s true name was, and even less of an idea as to whether or not he’d used it.
“I will tell you within an hour. Stay where you are, and wait.”
Mr. Kazan began what was essentially an exercise in resource conservation. The odds were, he knew, that Imad had been exposed and was either under arrest or close surveillance. There was a chance, though, that he was neither. If that were the case, it would be best to have him released from the hospital and in the company of friends. Mr. Kazan would check with an employee of the hospital, first to see what name Imad was registered under, and second, to see what possibility there might be to obtain his release. If there was a chance, he then would send an eminently expendable resource named Anton into the hospital to extricate Imad.
Mr. Kazan’s route to becoming informed was circuitous, in keeping with sound procedure. He called a man, who called a man, who contacted a nurse at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s, who ascertained the information and began reversing the process. It took less than an hour. The nurse’s information was accurate, but incomplete. Imad had been admitted under his real name. He had a cracked cervical vertebra, was suffering from a concussion, and was incommunicative. There was no information available regarding police interest. Since he was not talking with anyone, and was not cooperating in any way, he was being held pending notification of relatives.
Mr. Kazan was certain that police involvement would become more and more intense the longer it took to find Imad’s “relatives.” On the other hand, it did appear that a relative would be able to obtain his release. The sooner the better.
He called Anton.
Physicians Consultation Room
Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital Complex
Central London
10:11 Greenwich Mean Time
“His name is Imad Imadhi, according to his identification. He won’t talk to me at all,” said Dr. Benton. “He does have a cracked C-5 vertebra, and a concussion. He could be released, but we have no way of being certain that we’re communicating with him.”
“What do you mean by that? Is he reluctant, or is it something relating to his injuries?” asked Trowbridge.
“It is definitely not amnesia,” said Dr. Benton. “I suspect it is reluctance, for some reason. He appears to be Arabic. I thought it might be because I am a woman, but I had Dr. Givens try to talk to him, and he also got nowhere.”
Blyth looked up from his notes. “Dr. Givens is male?”
“Yes. Sorry.” She shook her head. “We have a counselor who is fluent in Arabic, but he gets no response at all. Judging from his reactions to things that we say, I’m certain the he does understand English.”
Trowbridge looked at a receipt form. “All he had with him was his billfold, a large pocket knife, two keys for a door that is demonstrably not in that building, the ubiquitous cell phone, and a comb.” He saw Dr. Benton’s eyebrow raise.
“Were those the effects he had upon admission?” she asked.
“Done with a proper warrant,” he said, pleasantly. “Properly served upon your administrator, who was most cooperative.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“He’ll have it all back before he wakes up,” said Trowbridge. “With a receipt that says we looked at his personal effects.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Blyth. “We’ll just be another second, if you wouldn’t mind telling them that the room is still occupied?”
Dr. Benton stood, and said, “I hope you can find who did this to him.” She gave a tight lipped smile. “Not the gas company.”
“I do as well,” said Blyth.
As soon as she had left, Blyth said, “We’re doing some things with his mobile phone numbers. I hope to have something fairly soon.”
“He’s an engineer,” said Trowbridge. “Here on a visa. Works for a civil engineering firm in Cranford. Lives near there, on Hayes Road, Southall. We know nobody in Northwood’s building knew him or knew why he would have been near the second-floor landing.”
“Good. We have Northwood’s laptop, or what’s left of it. It was in the street. Hard drive seems intact, so we may have things,” said Trowbridge.
“Since this Imad Imadhi does have the same first name as a possible conspirator in the Emma Schiller kidnapping, he may also have been the one who brought the bomber. Since the surveillance team isn’t precisely sure how the bomber arrived,” said Blyth, sarcastically, “it could well be him. But, however she got there, there’s no vehicle unaccounted for in the vicinity. No cab, no limo service, had a fare there, you say?”
“None,” said Trowbridge. “Perhaps she lived in the general neighborhood.”
“We may have some information that says otherwise,” said Blyth. “Should be going across your desk about now.” Blyth stretched in his chair. “Long day. Well, then, my money’s on the fact that our Mr. Imadhi knew someone who was killed. Either the Mitchell woman, or Northwood, or the bomber. I’d bet on two of the three.” He dialed his cell phone. “Yes, Blyth here. Be a good man, and send an officer to the room of one Imad Imadhi . . . he’s a patient here. Yes. One should do, he apparently had a bit of a broken neck. Just observe, for now. Yes. Good.” He closed the phone.
“If he was her transportation, where’s his car?”
“An excellent question. The ride certainly wasn’t seen by Mitchell’s cameraman. He was outside in the street when it happened.”
“And he saw no one?”
“No. He’s a photographer, wouldn’t you think he would be aware? But, no. He turns out to be one of those who take wonderful photos, if someone points them at the subject and says to press the button. He saw lots of people. It was raining, he had the interior light on, reading a magazine. He can’t identify any of them, just was aware they would pass fairly close. Just shapes in the rain. That’s corroborated by the surveillance team, by the way. Actually,” and he cleared his throat, “the way they ended up milling about, most of the
people he saw were likely ours.”
“The surveillance people, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad they were good for something,” said Blyth. “Just to cheer you up, Henry Morris referred to suicide bombers as ‘a volatile lot.’”
Trowbridge grinned. “I shall remember that.”
“See to it you remember that it isn’t funny. It’s just an example of the dark humor you’d expect from someone who defused bombs for a living.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Trowbridge.
“But Mark says he saw the woman enter the building . . . he thinks she may have come from the west on Burnaby Street. That’s a deduction, by the way. He first saw her near the corner, but had been looking up Ashburnham just before he saw her. It was an impression he got.”
“But he watched her go in?”
“He did. Waited several seconds, and followed her. She stopped on the landing to the second floor, and that’s when Mark turned around and walked to the first floor to make a call to Alice. Thought the woman might be aware he was following her, he said. At that point, a slender man of middle height entered the building, and started up the stairs. This Imadhi.”
“No contact, though?” asked Blyth.
“No. Didn’t even get a good look at him, he came in so quickly. Mark says that the blast occurred; he ran up the stair, had to jump over Imadhi on the second floor landing on his way to third. He says that our engineer was just sitting in the stairwell, covered with plaster.”
“Struck on the head, wasn’t he?”
“Apparently so. Yes. He was tended to by the first paramedic to go up the stair.”
Blyth leafed through a small stack of papers. “And this is the paramedic . . . yes, who says that, and I’m quoting, ‘the victim never uttered a word, although I spoke to him often. I did have the impression that he understood me . . . ,’ end of quote. Stunned, do you suppose?”
“Don’t know,” said Trowbridge.
“Well, he doesn’t appear to have said anything much at all since he’s come in here. Sleeps a lot, I’m told. Although that’s consistent with a concussion.”
“It is,” said Trowbridge, dryly.
“And it’s also consistent with someone who doesn’t wish to speak,” said Blyth.
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